Some of us older voters feel like lately we can’t seem to wake up from the nightmare that is now the normal political landscape.  How is this happening?  It’s like an insane circus with evil clowns has taken over what used to be at least a recognizable, reasonable discourse.

Even Canadians–CANADIANS!– are doing parodies of us!  But in reality, they’re getting nervous up there.  OK, the funny joke is over, get back to being grownups, Americans!  Is a Canadian Berlin wall next up after Mexico’s?  Seriously, many of us are eyeing saner places to escape to, should this all play out as dreaded.

No, I’m not going to simplify this into a Hitler analogy, although there are certain similar ingredients coming into play.  Hard not to be a little apprehensive, being from the generation who had parents and grandparents who managed to survive concentration camps, and mostly who didn’t.  I’ve seen the tattoos and the traumatized victims and peers.

I’d like to believe that Americans aren’t all a bunch of dumb apathetic sheep, ignorant of history, passively allowing a violent dictatorship to materialize around them.  I’d like to hope that some intelligence would prevail and remind us of who we aspire to be.  Perhaps some of us would even rise up and try to restore our nation to at least the stage of progress we had left off at, before we all went crazy and comatose.

But why does it even have to come to that?  How is it that so many Americans have dumbed down to this degree?  How do they not see “the emperor has no clothes”?  (i.e. the [insert candidate] has shit for brains.)  To some of us, it’s so obvious.  Is intelligence devolving?

I feel like we’re sitting on a ticking time bomb that is the earth itself if we continue to ignore the glaring symptoms.  The people who blindly vote infantile greedy charlatans into office are going to get a rude awakening.  They don’t see they’re enabling their own demise, as their poor choices ripple out at the world and come back on all of us.

It’s like toddlers have taken over.  I’ve seen what a room full of two-year-olds can do to each other and any infants unfortunate enough to be in their path.  It’s not pretty, but your hands are tied, as they wreak destruction.  Is this what we’ve come down to, the lowest common denominator?

I know, I’m just an old, under-educated hippie preaching to the choir, simplifying a complex issue, but why does it have to be complicated rocket science?  Why do we settle for mediocrity and corruption as usual?  Look at that lineup of power-hungry dumbasses and ask yourself how we even take them seriously or entrust our grandchildren’s future to them?

We have to be better and smarter than this.  This isn’t a game show or the Super Bowl, it’s our one short life on earth, with which to make a difference, or at least to not screw it up worse for everyone else.  What little power we do have to influence outcomes ought to be wisely used, not squandered or forfeited.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled drivel.